Terrorism and the Novel, 1970–2001

Abstract

Since 1970, terrorism has become a prominent subject for English-language novels. In an attempt to characterize the modern terrorism novel and the cultural work it has performed, the authors have devised a typology of terrorism-infiction from 1970 through 2001. Over a thousand novels were documented, including both thrillers and mainstream works. A sample of twenty-five novels from the period was then selected for careful reading, analysis, and comparison. Preliminary results establish that though there is a great deal of diversity in terrorism novels, both in what they do with terrorism and why, they are by and large focused less on politics than on sentiment and less on the perpetrators of terrorism than on its victims. But novels introduce an innovation in what has been called the “mythography of terrorism” by introducing new types of “controlling consciousnesses” through which terrorist violence is perceived.

Terrorism, Taboo, and Discursive Resistance: The Agonistic Potential of the Terrorism Novel

“…As a contemporary form of narrative, the terrorism novel (like the terrorism film or television show) is today ubiquitous, available in every bookshop in every Western country. One study has documented more than a thousand novels which have terrorism as a major theme, many of them written since the 1970s, when modern terrorism emerged as a serious political force in international politics (Appelbaum and Paknadel ). And of course, since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the English‐language terrorism novel (along with the Western‐dominated terrorism studies field more broadly) has continued to proliferate, particularly in popular fiction, where it now constitutes its own subgenre within the broader thriller genre.…”

“…There is no question that more than a decade of the global war on terror has demonstrably increased levels of direct and structural violence and enabled state (and in some cases, nonstate) oppression and domination across the globe . Moreover, in this period, the terrorism discourse —or what has been called the “mythography of terrorism” (Zulaika and Douglass ; Appelbaum and Paknadel ) or the terrorism “truth regime”—has been normalized, and materialized as a powerful and enduring social structure and cultural taboo in many (particularly Western) societies . Maintained by a large assortment of social institutions (the media, academia, security agencies, legal entities, political actors, and so on), an ever‐growing set of material and discursive practices of security and control (external war, targeted killing, rendition and torture, mass surveillance, security controls, and the like), and a vast array of cultural productions (films, novels, academic outputs, newspaper articles, official reports, laws, regulations, jokes, Web sites, comics, art, theater, and so on), the terrorism discourse functions to generate consensus for, legitimize, and thereby enable the material practices of counterterrorism.…”

“…Among an array of possible forms of aesthetically oriented discursive resistance including poetry, music, and art (see Bleiker ), I contend that the novel has genuine potential due to its narrative, storied form and prospective societal reach. However, to date, the terrorism novel has largely failed to realize its promise as a form of discursive resistance and has instead tended to reinforce the counterterrorism truth regime by reinforcing and maintaining the current terrorism mythography (Appelbaum and Paknadel ).…”

Teaching (Something About) Terrorism: Ethical and Methodological Problems, Pedagogical Suggestions

“…It is even more important to rely on works of fiction when it is time to teach the influence of social representation of political issue (Antonello and O'Leary ). In a rich and thorough analysis of 1081 contemporary English‐language novels, Robert Appelbaum and Alexis Paknadel offer a very challenging view on what modern fiction has done with terrorism and how these novels contribute to understanding images and representations of terrorism: “All terrorism fiction, literary or popular, is itself a part of culture in the widest sense of the term—a part of how modern society generates and circulates social and symbolic meaning—and it is inevitably imbricated in the mythographies of the culture at large, which circulate their meanings by way of a large number of media, from talk radio and film to news magazines and, alas, other fiction” (Appelbaum and Paknadel : 401).…”

Fantasias of terrorism

“…We can therefore ask, what do fantasias say about "us" in two different but complementary senses, and the question will be worth asking. We can ask, how do these texts construct an "us" by representing terrorist violence (Appelbaum & Paknadel, 2008)? And we can ask, how do we locate a broader cultural, social or political "us" from out of which fantasias of terrorism arise?…”